About a week ago, I was hanging out at North Shore Baseball Academy with some time on my hands. My 6:30 lesson had cancelled  at the last minute due to illness, so I was just sort of strolling around trying to keep myself occupied for the next half hour.

In one cage was a high school age boy hitting off a pitching machine. I started chatting with his father, just some general stuff. But as we were talking I was also watching the boy. He was popping up a lot, although every now and then he’d hit a good one. I could see why — he was dropping his back shoulder before rotating — and that created a dilemma for me. I so much wanted to offer to help him out, but I wasn’t sure that my recommendations would be all that welcome. After all, who was I to tell them anything?

Ultimately I decided not to say anything. It was probably the toughest thing I had to do all night.

Once you really get into coaching it’s hard to turn it back off. I can’t even watch a movie where they’re playing softball without analyzing the technique. (I can tell you with utmost certainty that softball is not Hillary Duff’s game.)

So how about you? Have you ever been walking around a field or indoor facility, seen some bad technique or bad instruction, and wanted to say something? Did you, or did you keep your mouth shut too?